Dough Bruhnke discusses the Global Chamber's work helping businesses in Africa, Nepal, South Asia, and ex-Soviet regions adopt capitalist practices. Twenty years ago, a small group in India taught English and expanded internet access, creating a lower-middle-class that now buys American goods. Growing developing economies become bigger markets for U.S. exporters.
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You know, within the Global Chamber, certainly one of our really driving points is how can we help people get more involved and successful in exporting, you know, not just in the US but in Africa and in Nepal and places like Nepal that don't quite get capitalism or don't quite get kind of how business works to, to the, to the level that we understand it, right? And— Oh yeah. and pushing that forward— and pushing might not be the right word, but moving forward within their culture to be able to have them be more successful in the world is good for them, and it's really at the end good for us.
Definitely. Look, I, like you, I was an expat in India, and 20 years ago there was a huge push push by a couple of individuals, and really you can trace it in India back to a few individuals, to really try and share the wealth by helping to educate people about specific things that they could use to do business, right? So this whole push towards teaching people English, getting cellular communications and the internet out into the hands of the masses, You can really trace these to 2 or 3 individuals back around 20 years ago in India, and it's created a massive amount of wealth, not necessarily with rich people, but tens or maybe hundreds of millions of Indians who are now lower middle class who wouldn't be if it wasn't for this. They are buying stuff from America. They're doing business with America. Trade is not a zero-sum game. The more we can help Africa and South Asia and the ex-Soviet Union and all these places develop their business, they will buy more from us.
